For Week 3 of the challenge, we have Light the Silence, an exploration-based game where you have to make noise in order to see!
Try it out on Itch: https://switchbackstudio.itch.io/light-the-silence
This idea more or less sprang up out of the ether, I can’t really think of any particular inspirations for it.
At first, I wasn’t sure whether this was going to be a puzzle game based around creating sounds, or an action game. There’s also a decent argument to be made for a sound-focused horror game, though I don’t think I’ll ever develop one of those. Still, in the end I decided to go for a more relaxed, meditative exploration game, largely due to the limited timeframe.
I’m pretty pleased with it overall, the simple visuals and colors lend to a really artsy and cohesive feel, and the soundtrack turned out super great. I think one of the bigger drawbacks is that it isn’t as eye-catching, and the concept is a little difficult to explain succinctly.
The development process this week was relatively smooth, with one glaring exception. Unreal Engine has a built-in plugin called Sound Visualization, which allows you to sample a section of a .wav file and output the amplitude. However, turns out that when you package a game for release, the plugin just… doesn’t work? It’s apparently meant only for use in the editor, not as a standalone program, which I discovered early on Saturday morning. Lesson learned, I should test out packaging the game way earlier than I have been. I fortunately had a quick workaround prepared, so it wasn’t a challenge-ruining setback, just an annoying one.
See you next week!
Switchback Studio 